The Good Decade
The era of '''The Good Decade' lasted from about 1990 AD until 2001 AD. It began with the collapse of the Soviet Union. It then ended with the 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda. The American satirical magazine The Onion memorably commemorated the last decade of the twentieth century with the slogan "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is over." Indeed the 1990s were relatively peaceful: the Cold War officially ended; Germany was reunited after 45 years of separation; the First Gulf War was a responsible and restrained response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait; the Good Friday Agreement brought relative peace to Northern Ireland; Bill Clinton got closer than anyone to solving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict; and South Africa dismantled apartheid surprisingly peacefully. Inevitably there were exceptions, none more so than Yugoslavia which dissolved in an orgy of violence and ethnic cleansing. Economically, Japan’s three decade-long economic boom ended in a severe recession, from which it had barely recovered two decades later. Meanwhile, politically the 1990s were defined by a pulling back from the right-wing politics of the 1980s towards the centre, with leaders like Bill Clinton in the US and New Labour in Britain. The European Union also took a great leap forwards in terms of integration, with Maastricht and the Euro. History Russia of Boris Yeltsin Boris Yeltsin (1991-99) came to power in Russia on a wave of optimism. He had been a long-time member of the Community Party, and on the Central Committee from 1981, becoming well-known for railing against corruption. Once a faithful supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, in 1987 Yeltsin was reprimanded and demoted for his blunt criticism of the slow pace of reform. Yet he made an extraordiary political comeback as Gorbachev’s staunchest critic, and in June 1991 he swept the election for president of Russia; he won 59% of the vote, compared to just 18% for his closest competitor. In the aftermath of Gorbachev’s resignation and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Yeltsin remained in power as president of the new Russian Federation (1991–present). Alas, he seemed to have no coherent vision for the newly liberated Russia, except to do everything the opposite of the Communists. He believed that the only way to achieve the formidable task of transforming Russia's Socialist economy into a Capitalist market economy was through “''economic shock therapy''”. He eliminated almost all price controls, privatised a slew of major state assets, allowed for the ownership of private property, and otherwise embraced unhindered free market principles. Under his watch, a stock exchange and private banks came into being. Yet the reforms occurred in a period of low oil prices, which had long propped up the economy. The results were disastrous, with the already weak Russian economy virtually collapsing. Many Russians lapsed into poverty as inflation ran rampant and the cost of living rose; in January 1992 alone consumer prices went up 296%. The transition of Russia’s traditional heavy industries towards consumer-based industries would require years, and in the meantime production output plummeted. The government responded by printing money to fill holes in the budget and to prop-up failing factories, with the result that people lost faith in the ruble, and the economy became increasingly dollarized; the ruble would eventually collapse in 1998. Meanwhile, Yeltsin’s mass privatization scheme was a debacle. Free vouchers were granted to every citizens to encourage worker cooperatives to buy-out factories, but in a collapsing economy Oligarchs found it simple to buy them for cash at a pittance. A majority of the national property fell into the hands of a select few Oligarchs, who became shockingly wealthy. Government corruption meanwhile ran rife, and many of these Oligarchs were friends of those in power; in fact Yeltsin himself received huge sums of money from Oligarchs for his re-election campaign in 1996. During Yeltsin’s presidency, the basic functions of the state also nearly collapsed. Low salaries led many in the legal system and law-enforcement to switch to the private sector or resort to taking bribes. They proved unable to combat an explosive rise in crime and the emergence of a Russian Mafia. By the end of the Yeltsin era, crime rates had declined somewhat, but only because of the consolidation of organised crime syndicates after a bloody power struggle. The country’s health services were also under incredible strain, and life expectancy declined in the country. Freedom of the press meant this all came as a huge shock to most Russians, who under the Soviet period had very rarely encountered such problems. For all his liberal image, Yeltsin wasn't afraid to put democracy on hold or use force when needed. After surviving impeachment proceedings, Yeltsin disbanded the Communist-dominated parliament in September 1993 and called for fresh elections. He then resolved the ensuing standoff by ordering tanks to shell the parliamentary building. The following year Yeltsin sent troops into Chechnya, a breakaway republic of the former Russian Empire; the First Chechen War (1994-96). The Muslim Chechens had suffered horribly under the Soviet Union, especially during the Stalin era. Yet on winning her independence in 1991, Chechnya rapidly began to crumble into a “failed state”, with the ethnic cleansing of non-Chechens and becoming a hotbed of bandits and illegal arms dealing. In December 1994, Yeltsin ordered 40,000 troops into Chechnya to restore stability and bring a Russian sympathising Chechen leader to power. It proved far from easy to subdue the very well-armed Chechens. The capital Grozny was finally captured in mid-January, but only after virtually bombing the city to rubble. Yet the Chechens withdrew into the mountains, and resorted to an arduous guerilla war, while terrorists took the fight into southern Russia itself. When the Chechens regained control of Grozny in a surprise raid in August 1996, the Russians lost the will to fight. By the end of the month, Yeltsin's government agreed a cease-fire and the Russians withdrew. The war left some 80,000 people dead, the majority of them civilians. Russian federal control was restored during the Second Chechen War, but the lingering effects of the conflict have reverberated for years. Facing growing unpopularity and protests as a result of the chaotic post-Soviet reality of Russia, Yeltsin was plagued by continuing ill health from 1996, possibly brought on by depression and alcohol abuse. In November of that year, he underwent a quintuple heart bypass operation. On New Year's Eve in 1999, Boris Yeltsin surprised the world by announcing his resignation, and asking the Russian people’s forgiveness for past mistakes. He selected then-prime minister Vladimir Putin to take over as acting president until elections due in March 2000. By some estimates, his approval ratings on leaving office were as low as 2%. One of Putin's first acts as president was to grant Yeltsin immunity from any form of future prosecution. United States of Bush I and Clinton In 1988, Ronald Reagan’s former vice president, George H. W. Bush ran for president and won against Democrat Michael Dukakis, in a profoundly negative campaign that focused almost entirely on attacks rather than plans for the future. Much of the George H. W. Bush (1989-93) presidency was dominated by foreign policy. With the end of the Cold War, the United States emerged as the world's only remaining superpower, and Bush declared it the dawn of a “''New World Order''”. However, without the Cold War to orient US foreign policy, international affairs became much more confusing during a tumultuous time for the nation. In December 1989, Bush ordered the invasion of Panama to depose General Manuel Noriega, who was threatening the security of the canal and involved in the drug trade. The invasion, which lasted four days, resulted in 260 deaths of which just 26 were American. Noriega was brought to the United States for trial as a drug trafficker. The operation provoked international outrage in the United Nations, especially from Latin America. From March 1993, he also sent troops into Somalia as part of a UN peacekeeping mission to deliver food aid, during the decades-long Somali Civil War (1988-present). The engagement is notable for the botched operation that spiralled into the two-day Battle of Mogadishu (3–4 October 1993), that left 19 US servicemen dead. Yet Bush's best known international intervention was his decisive response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait; the First Gulf War (1990-91). A US led UN coalition force drove the Iraqis out of the oil-rich country, and, once achieved, did not pursue deposing Saddam Hussein. The Gulf War lifted President Bush’s approval rating to unheard of levels, and it seemed that there was no way that he would lose his re-election bid. However, when it came to domestic affairs, Bush was unable to shake-off the perception that he was a millionaire, Ivy-League educated, Washington inside who was out of touch with regular Americans. An economic recession that began in late 1990 persisted into ‘92. Along with many thousands of manufacturing workers who lost their jobs in America’s ongoing de-industrialisation, white-collar workers were now also thrown out of work, and record numbers of university graduates couldn’t find employment. In a move that earned him the enmity of his conservative supporters and the distrust of many voters who had backed him on his campaign promise "Read my lips, no new taxes”, in 1990 he raised taxes in an attempt to cope with the soaring budget deficit. Meanwhile, the Rodney King incident called into question the achievements of the civil rights movement, and made it abundantly clear that race remained a volatile issue in the United State. In April 1992, an all-white jury in California acquitted three of four policemen of brutally beating African-American motorist Rodney King, even though a witness videotaped much of the incident. After the verdict, Los Angeles erupted into the deadliest riots seen in America since the draft riots during the American Civil War (1861-65). 52 people were killed and 2,300 injured in rioting that caused $1 billion in property damage. Yet, Bush seemed incapable of being the great American healer when it came to addressing the country’s most fundamental social problems. In 1992, Bush ran a lacklustre re-election campaign and lost to the charismatic and charming former Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. The election was also notable for third party candidate, Texas Billionaire Ross Perot, who won 19% of the popular vote; the best 3rd party performance since 1912. Bill Clinton (1993-2001) was inaugurated in January 1993 at age 46, making him the third-youngest president in history up to that time. Clinton ran as a centrist Democrat, but his administration got off to a shaky start. His attempt to fulfil a campaign promise to end discrimination against homosexuals in the military was met with powerful opposition from conservatives and some military leaders, and in the end his compromise policy known as “''Don’t ask, don’t tell''” failed to satisfy either side. His attempted to enact universal health insurance for all Americans proved a political disaster. The bill failed to move through Congress, and led to the Republicans regaining control of both houses of Congress in 1994. Despite these early missteps, in an impressive political comeback, Clinton’s first term was marked by numerous successes: the ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico; welfare reforms that included strings like work requirements and time limits for benefits; and he appointed several women and minorities to significant government posts. His political rehabilitation was in many way helped by Newt Gingrich’s heavy handed handling of a deficit-reduction budget dispute that resulted in a pair of government shutdowns in 1995, from which Clinton emerged favourably painting the Republicans as the cause. He also had the good fortune to be presiding over one of America's longest periods of strong economic prosperity, spurred in part by the 1990s high-tech internet boom. Unemployment was below 4%, inflation was down, and in 1998 the United States would achieve a federal budget surplus for the first time in three decades. In 1996, Clinton handily defeated Republican challenger Bob Dole to secure a second term in office. His various foreign policy achievements included: negotiating the partially successful Oslo Accords (1993) between Israel and the PLO during which the famous handshake occurred between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat; helped stabilise the war-torn former Yugoslavia; helped broker the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland; and took a firm stand against Saddam Hussein, for noncompliance with UN inspectors testing for evidence of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. However, his lack of response in the face of genocide in Rwanda stands out as a major blemish on his foreign policy record. Yet, Clinton’s second term was dominated by the Monica Lewinsky Scandal. In January 1994, an independent prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, had been appointed to investigate business dealings by the Clinton’s Arkansas housing development corporation known as Whitewater. Although this investigation did not turn up conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, Starr expanded his investigation into Clinton’s affair with the young White House intern; an affair the president at first denied, and then later admitted. On the basis of the salacious Starr Report (September 1998), the Republican-dominated House of Representatives voted to impeach the president for perjury and obstruction of justice; making Clinton the second president to be impeached, after Andrew Johnson in 1868. Nevertheless, the Senate found that Clinton’s lying about his sex life was not an adequate reason for his removal from office. Despite the scandal, Bill Clinton’s job approval rating remained high during the final years of his presidency. Yet, the Clinton era also saw the increasing polarisation of the American people, although Clinton himself did not direct these changes. Conflict grew between conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, sometimes referred to as the “'Culture War'”. Since the immigration reform in 1965 that ended quotas based on national origin, the United States had seen almost 24 million immigrants arrive, predominantly from Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Eastern Europe; by 2007 Latinos would replace African Americans as the second largest ethnic group. Diversity also increased in other ways: single-parent families became more accepted; and homosexuals became increasingly visible as a result of the LGBT rights movement. Meanwhile, throughout the 1990s politicians had competed with each other to see who could be tougher on crime, and the number of Americans in prison skyrocketed; by 2002 the United States had the highest incarceration rate in the world, and still does. These divisive issues were amplified by the growth of Cable News and the Internet, as it became easier than ever to only hear voices that you already knew you agreed with, and where conservative news didn’t necessarily resemble liberal news. This polarisation would only be exacerbated during the eras of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. First Gulf War With the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988, Iraq found itself deeply in debt to her neighbouring counties, mostly to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Tensions between Iraq and Kuwait were heightened when Saddam Hussain (1979-2003) accused the Kuwaitis of side-drilling across the border, as well as exceeding its OPEC quotas, thus reducing the price of oil and costing Iraq billions; both claims were not without some justification. Meanwhile, Iraq had long claimed that Kuwait was rightfully part of Iraq, as historically part of the Ottoman Empire's province of Basra; the border was drawn by the British in 1922, making Iraq virtually landlocked. The Iraqi army had not fully demobilised from the war with Iran, and after months of threatening military action, on 2 August 1980 Iraqi forces launched a surprise attack against Kuwait and quickly overran the country. Saddam gambled that the West did not have the stomach for a Middle East war. However, the UN immediately condemned Iraq's actions and demanded they withdraw or face war; later giving Saddam an ultimatum to withdraw by 15 January 1991. However, far from withdrawing, Iraqi forces began massing on the southern border with Saudi Arabia, threatening the world's second largest oil reserves. In response, King Fahd accepted an offer by George H. W. Bush to send US troops to defend Saudi Arabia. Conducting extensive diplomacy, the Bush administration assembled a large coalition that ultimately saw 34 nations, including Arab states like Egypt and Syria, commit troops and resources to the region. The military build-up eventually reached over 750,000 troops under US General Norman Schwarzkopf, in an operation dubbed Desert Shield. As the UN ultimatum date of 15 January approached, President Bush assured the American people, “''if one American soldier has to go into battle, that soldier will have enough force behind him win and then get out as soon as possible; this will not be another Vietnam''”. General Schwarzkopf was determined to minimise American and coalition casualties by keeping his ground troop out of the battle for as long as possible. Following Saddam's steadfast refusal to withdraw from Kuwait, on 17 January coalition aircraft began a colossal air attack on Iraq itself from bases in Saudi Arabia and six aircraft-carriers in the Persian Gulf, in an operation dubbed Desert Storm. Initial targets included Iraqi runways, power stations, radar and communication networks, and chemical weapons facilities, including precision stealth bombing of the capital Baghdad. Having gained absolute air superiority over Iraq and destroyed Saddam’s ability to coordinate his forces, coalition air forces began systematically attacking military targets. In response, Saddam ordered SCUD missiles launched at Israel, hoping to bait the Israelis into retaliating and provoking Arab states into withdrawing from the coalition. However, after desperate diplomacy by President Bush, Yitzhak Rabin agreed not to react, in return for a promise that 40% of coalition air forces would be redirected to hunting the mobile SCUD missile launchers; yet difficult to locate, the SCUD attacks continued. Next Saddam ordered an attack on the Saudi city of Khafji in late January, which he hoped would provoke the Americans into the risky ground combat they wanted to avoid. In a sobering experience, after two days, coalition forces recaptured the city, after suffering 43 casualties including 25 Americans. Throughout the war, US policy regarding media freedom was extremely carefully managed compared to the Vietnam War, in order to portray the war as clinical and relatively bloodless with high-tech precision bombing. However on 13 February, a bunker in Amiriyah near Baghdad was bombed which was being used by Iraqi refugees, causing the deaths of 408 civilians, many of them children. The shocking images of the distraught relatives forced Schwarzkopf to curtail the bombing of Iraqi cities. After battered the Iraqi army for over a month, General Schwarzkopf prepared a massive ground offensive. The Iraqi forces were deploy in defensive lines all along the Kuwaiti border behind great sand ramparts, with Saddam’s elite Republican Guards just inside the Iraqi border in reserve. On 24 February, Schwarzkopf launched his masterpiece of strategic discerption. First, coalition forces advanced into Kuwait from the south, fixing the Iraqis in place, and possibly drawing Saddam’s reserves into Kuwait. Meanwhile, a second even bigger force lay in wait for a second offensive from the west into southern Iraq to cut-off and destroy Saddam’s Republican Guards, thus liberating Kuwait and weakening the Iraqi army so they could never threaten the region again. As the coalition invasion began, Saddam Hussain ordered the Iraqi army to blow-up the oil fields of Kuwait, turning the country into a scene of apocalyptic devastation. If anything the southern offensive was too successful. Nearly everywhere their advance was virtually unopposed, as Iraqi conscripted, having been devastated by the initial coalition bombardment, either abandoned their positioned or surrendered. General Schwarzkopf ordered his main offensive from the west to go-in 15 hours ahead of schedule, fearing the elite Republican Guard would withdraw. Over 1,500 tanks swept east across a hundred miles of Iraqi desert, and closed in on the Iraqi reserves. In a number of large tank battles, the Iraqi tanks were utterly outgunned by the superior coalition tanks, which had greater range and could fire on the move. Iraqi resistance completely collapsed. After a devastating air-attack on fleeing Iraqis on the main roads out of Kuwait City, dubbed the “Highway of Death”, the American leadership feared that the war was increasingly looking like a massacre. On 28 February, just 100 hours after ground operations began, President Bush declared a cease-fire, and the First Gulf War was over. There are no official figures for the Iraqi casualties, but they are estimated at over 20,000. The coalition by contrast lost 292 troops in the conflict, far less than anyone had dared hope. According to the peace terms that Saddam accepted, Iraq formally recognised Kuwait’s sovereignty and agreed to divest itself of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, as well as all missiles with ranges exceeding 90 miles. President Bush’s deft, responsible and restrained handling of the First Gulf War brought American international prestige to its pinnacle, although hawks in Washington would criticise him for leaving Saddam Hussein in power. President Bush expected Saddam’s regime to crumble, and indeep there were uprisings from the Kurds in the north, as well as Shia groups and demoralised soldiers, but the US-led coalition failed to support the rebels, and they were brutally suppressed. In the aftermath, Iraqi authorities made every effort to frustrate the carrying out of the peace terms, especially UN weapons inspections. This resulted in another three-day bombing campaign in 1998, but it failed to alter the Iraqi steadfast refusal to admit weapons inspectors. Saddam eventually readmitted UN inspectors in November 2002, but US president George W. Bush disputed their findings leading to the Second Gulf War. Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Bill Clinton’s Oslo Accords (1993) probably came closer than any other peace process to an actual settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank in the aftermath of the Six Days' War (1973), brought millions of politically stateless and desperately poor Palestinians within their territory. In 1974, the Arab world recognised Yasser Arafat’s PLO as the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and the United Nations followed suit granting the PLO observer status in the UN. Yet for many years Israel and the United States continued to consider it a terrorist organisation. Not without justification for the PLO and various splinter groups were responsible for numerous dramatic acts of terror, such as the July 1976 hijack of Air France passenger-plane with 98 Israeli passengers on board, that ended in a hostage-rescue mission in Uganda that left 3 hostages killed in the crossfire. Compromises like the Camp David Accords (1978) between Israel and Egypt only enraged the extremists, made even worse by Israel’s frequent unilateral acts of aggression. In June 1981, Israel launched a surprise air-strike that destroyed an Iraqi nuclear power station that they claimed had military uses. In June 1982, the Israelis occupied southern Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-90), and forced the PLO into exile in Tunisia. Southern Lebanon also brought millions more Palestinians within their territory, with Israeli indifference allowing such tragedies as the Sabra and Shatila Massacre (September 1982) to occur, that left 2,300 Palestinian men, women and children dead. Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank has never been internationally recognised, not even by the United States. Nevertheless, Israeli settlement building within these territories gathered pace from 1977 with encouragement from the government, despite President Carter warning Israel in no uncertain terms that the United States considered it illegal. By 1983 there were more than 20,000 settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The difficulty in ever removing such settlers was plainly demonstrated by Israel’s withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula in 1981, where a few hundred settlers had to be removed by water cannons and demolishing houses. Today there are over 550,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Although the United States has verbally condemn Israel's settlements as illegal, it has repeatedly vetoed such resolutions in the United Nations; for the first time in a generation the US abstained in December 2016. After a string of hard-line prime ministers, Israel’s stance towards the Palestinians softened somewhat from 1984, under the coalition government of Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres. In response, in 1988 Yasser Arafat’s PLO renounced terrorism in all its forms. However it did not stem the violence, with other hardline groups like Hezbollah and Hamas declaring the continuation of armed resistance, with suicide bombs in Israel becoming a terrifying feature of daily life. Meanwhile, a popular uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip known as the First Intifada (1987-93) saw widespread civil disobedience, and the throwing of stones and Molotov cocktails, as well as heavy-handed Israeli reprisals that left more than 1,000 Palestinians dead. The movement towards a partial peace began with the election of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1992. A series of face-to-face discussions between Israel’s foreign minister Shimon Peres and the PLO’s Yasser Arafat eventually yielded the Oslo Accords (September 1993). In it, the PLO formally recognised the sovereign state of Israel, and in return Rabin granted the PLO limited self-governance over the West Bank and Gaza Strip as the Palestinian Authority. Bill Clinton presided over the formal signing ceremony in Washington, that ended with the historic handshake between Rabin and Arafat; Rabin, Arafat, and Peres were together awarded the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize. Like President Sadat of Egypt, Yitzhak Rabin paid with his life for this gesture of peace; he was assassinated by a radical Orthodox Jew in November 1995. The intention of the Palestinian Authority was for Israel to gradually yielding more and more autonomy to the Palestinians. Over a series of summits the peace process continued, with Israel withdrawing her troops from southern Lebanon in May 2000. In a dramatic break from Israeli opposition to a two-nation solution, at the Camp David Summit in July 2000 Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak offered Arafat a proposal for a new Palestinian state with more land than any other time in the past or since. However, Arafat rejected it as inadequate. There were three principal obstacles: the territory of East Jerusalem especially the Temple Mount, refugees right of return, and Israeli security concerns. Historians are divided over who was responsible for the failure, although most agree that it was a mistake for the United State to try and mediate the negotiations. From this point on, things only got steadily worse. Two months after the failed Camp David Summit in September 2000, Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon planned a visit to the Temple Mount in East Jerusalem. The Temple Mount compound contains the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, and was treated by custom as under Palestinian control. Sharon led a group of a thousand armed guards to the temple, to make the point that there was no region not under Israeli control. The affront sparked Palestinian riots, and a violent Israeli crackdown that left 7 Palestinians dead and 300 had been wounded; 70 Israeli policemen were also injured. Another popular uprising erupted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Second Intifada (2000-05), reaching levels of violence far exceeding that of the First. It is calculated that the number of dead, military and civilian, is about 3000 Palestinian and 1000 Israelis. The Second Intifada hardening attitudes of most Israelis to the Palestinian cause. It also prompted an unusual and controversial solution to defending the “illegal” Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The West Bank Barrier is a 430-mile-long fence and concrete wall up to 8 metres high between Israel and the West Bank. It also encloses nearly 10% of Palestinian territory in the West Bank, and was condemned as a violation of international law by the International Court of Justice. Nevertheless, from the Israeli point of view it has been a great success; since 2008 there have been virtually no successful suicide attacks within Jerusalem. German Reunification Within weeks of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, Chancellor Helmut Kohl announced a 10-point program calling for the two Germanys to expand their cooperation, with the view toward eventual reunification. While this helped stem somewhat the chaos of refugees from East to West Germany, it alarmed many internationally. The victors of World War II (France, the Soviet Union, Britain, and the United States) had returned full sovereignty to West Germany in 1955, however they still retained their joint authority over the city of Berlin. Chancellor Kohl had not even forewarned them of his reunification announcement. President George H. W. Bush was supportive of reunification, on the condition that a united Germany remained in NATO. France’s François Mitterrand by no means wanted German reunification, but quickly came to realise that in the end it was inevitable, and he needed Kohl’s support for greater European Union integration. Britain’s Margaret Thatcher objected strongly to reunification, and tried to persuade Mikhail Gorbachev to take a strong position against it. However, in May 1990 Gorbachev suddenly announced that he had no objection to a unified Germany within NATO. With the last significant roadblock removed, Mrs. Thatcher dropped her objection, and Kohl moved rapidly. In December 1990 the first all-German free election since 1933 elected Helmut Kohl as chancellor of the reunified Germany. Yet the challenge of reunification was far from over. Chancellor Kohl had done little to prepare German taxpayers for the costs of unification, partly out of fears of the political consequences but also because the East German economy proved far worse than anyone had realised. Few eastern firms could compete on the world market, and many collapsed or became heavily dependent on federal subsidies. At the same time, the infrastructure required massive capital investment. The lingering economic gap haunted the east for more than a decade, as well as resentment at what they took for western arrogance and insensitivity. Eastern Germans also had to come to terms with the revelation that many of their most prominent citizens, as well as friends, neighbours, and even family members had been on the payroll of the East German secret police. On a more fundamental level, unification led to economic hardships such as unemployment and homelessness that for many had not existed before. The costs of reunification are estimated to amount to over €1.5 trillion, and it caused the Germany economy faltered throughout the 1990s. As a result in the election of 1998 Chancellor Kohl was defeated and replaced as chancellor by Gerhard Schröder. Britain of Major and New Labour Although the giant shadow of Margaret Thatcher loomed over him, the leadership style of John Major (1990-97) proved in stark contrast to his predecessor's. With his quiet and self-effacing manner, Major worked to heel the divisions within his party in the wake of a divisive decade, and make peace with the county with a friendlier and more centre-right version of conservative politics. Nevertheless, his first years in office coincided with an extended economic recession, with economic growth not re-established until early 1993. Despite this, in the election of 1992 voters regarded both parties with suspicion, and Major led the Conservatives to a record fourth consecutive victory, albeit with a reduced majority. His other successes included: presiding over the British involvement in the First Gulf War (1991), as the third largest participant after the United States and Saudi Arabia; negotiating Britain's entry into the Maastricht European Union in 1992; and a joint British-Irish initiative that obtained a temporary cease-fire in Northern Ireland in 1995. However, Major’s second term coincided with the rise of a Labour party in opposition that was once again a serious challenge, with the rise of New Labour. Throughout Thatcher years Labour had been in a state of indisciplined chaos, commonly called as the Wilderness Years. A civil war erupted in the party between moderates who blamed the trade unions and Winter of Discontent for the collapse of the Callaghan government, and the far-left who charged the leadership with abandoning socialism. In 1981, radical demagogue Tony Benn succeeded in introducing the right of party grass root members to select and sack MPs. The result was that the Labour Party became entirely enthralled to the trade unions, and was forced into some very unelectable party policies, such as unilateral nuclear disarmament. It also led to a split in the party, with four senior moderate MPs leaving to form a new centrist party, that eventually become the Liberal Democrats, Britain's third largest party. It was the leadership of Neil Kinnock (1983-1992) that eventually restored party discipline, with a ruthlessness that Mrs. Thatcher would have admired. The political assassination of opponents through the media was used to brutal effect, and he eventually weakened the power of trade unions by eliminating the block vote. Kinnock surrounded himself with an inner circle of reformers including Peter Mandelson, John Smith, Gordon Brown, and Tony Blair. Defeat in the 1987 election brought Kinnock to the realisation the Labour must move to the centre to attract the growing middle class vote. By the election of 1992, Labour had been relaunched as a thoroughly modernised party; gone were unelectable policies like nuclear disarmament, strong links to unions, reversing privatisation, and opposing the European Union. Yet Kinnock himself was increasingly at odds with the party he had transformed; his occasionally gaff prone speeches at odds with the party’s slick new presentation; and his traditional labour roots made his policies seem disingenuous. After Kinnock’s defeat to John Major, he resigned. After John Smith’s brief tenure before his sudden fatal heart attack in 1994, Tony Blair was elected leader of the Labour Party, after his close friend Gordon Brown stood down in his favour. In the era of the bright catchy BritPop music phenomenon, youthful and enormously charismatic Blair seemed to symbolise the new image of modern Britain. Using the phrase "New Labour" to distance the party from traditional Labour policies, and promote his blend of Thatcherite free market economics and social justice, it was of little surprise when Labour won the 1997 election by a landslide majority of 179; the largest in Labour’s history. Tony Blair (1997-2007) went on to win two more general elections: another landslide victory in 2001, and with a greatly reduced majority in 2005. Throughout much of Blair’s tenure, a buoyant economy, well managed by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, did a great deal to help maintain his popularity. On the domestic front: he granted the Bank of England the power to determine interest-rate policy without government interference; introduced the National Minimum Wage; devolved greater power to the national assemblies of Scotland and Wales; and established the first elected mayor for London. One of his biggest achievements came in 1998, when the Northern Ireland peace process made historic progress with the Good Friday Agreement. The Labour government also carried out major constitutional reforms on the House of Lords; he eliminated all but 92 of the hereditary peers, and reconstituted it as an assembly composed primarily of appointed life peers. On Europe, Blair took a rather traditional stand; portraying Britain as "a leading player" in Europe, while actually remaining largely aloof. Labour’s implementation of the European Union’s Social Chapter was at best half-hearted, and he endorsed Major’s opt-out of the European monetary union. On foreign affairs, Blair became increasingly convinced of Britain’s need to become more involved. He joined US-led United Nations interventions: participating in the bombing of Iraq in 1998; and won praise by sending peace-keepers to the former Yugoslavia in 1999 and Sierra Leone in 2000. For all his achievements in office and as Labour's most electorally successful leader, Tony Blair’s legacy would always be tarnished by the decisions he made in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, and subsequent “War on Terror”. Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement Since the start of The Troubles in the early 1970s, sectarian violence had become endemic in Northern Ireland, in a clash between rival nationalisms far more than rival religions. The Catholic republican IRA leadership resolved to erode the British presence in Northern Ireland through a war of attrition across the six counties and England, which they viewed as a continuation of the Irish War of Independence. For their part, the Protestant loyalist paramilitary organisations of the UDA and UVF had equal resolve to use indiscriminate violence to resist republican paramilitaries and to oppose Irish unification. By the late 1970s, the British government, despairing of a political settlement, tried to "normalise" Northern Ireland. In 1976 internment without trial was ended, and instead paramilitaries were treated as ordinary criminals. This provoked a grim struggle by republican prisoners for political status, first with the so-called “dirty protests” involving refusal to slop out their cells, and culminating in the hunger strikes of 1981 in which 10 republican prisoners led by Bobby Sands starved themselves to death. The strike radicalised Irish republicans, and was the driving force in enabling Sinn Féin, the IRA political wing, to slowly become a mainstream political party; weeks before his death in May, Bobby Sands was elected to the British Parliament. However, the bombing of civilian targets damaged support for Sinn Fein, particularly events like the Enniskillen bomb of 1987 in which 12 Protestants attending a war memorial service were killed. Throughout the 1980s and ‘90s Catholics voted in far greater numbers for the purely democratic SDLP. In the late 1970s, the IRA had a change of leadership with Gerry Adams coming to the fore, and a change of strategy to using small cells, more difficult to penetrate with informers. Attacks continued in Britain and further afield: a bomb during a military ceremonies in Hyde Park, London in 1982 that killed 11; a bombing assassination attempt on Margaret Thatcher in Brighton in 1984; a car bomb outside Harrods department store in London in 1983; and 3 IRA members killed while preparing a bomb in Gibraltar in 1988, which provoked allegations of a “shoot-to-kill policy”. Meanwhile, the British forces generally became much more careful to avoid killing civilians after the 1970s, although rubber bullets were often used to control riots which caused 16 civilian deaths. In 1985, the British government agreed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, allowing the Irish government an advisory role in Northern Ireland, to help bring an end to the Troubles. Inevitably, this prompted an escalation of loyalist paramilitary violence, sometimes targeting known republican but predominantly simply Catholic civilians. By the early 1990s, there were signs that republicans were looking for an end to the conflict in Northern Ireland, with talks between Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and SDLP leader John Hume. In 1994, the IRA declared a unilateral ceasefire, which was followed six weeks later by the main loyalist groups. In 1995, US President Bill Clinton appointed George Mitchell as special envoy to Northern Ireland, and the British and Irish governments agreed that Mitchell would chair the peace process. However, Sinn Fein was not allowed into the peace process until the IRA gave up its weapons, and as a result the IRA broke its ceasefire in February 1996 with a massive bomb in Canary Wharf in London. In 1997, the IRA resumed its ceasefire, with Sinn Fein freely admitted into peace process, along with the republican SDLP, the loyalist UUP, as well as the British and Irish governments; the extreme loyalist DUP led by Ian Paisley refused to participate. These negotiations culminated in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. The central planks of the Agreement were that: all parties agreed that the political status of Northern Ireland could only be decided by the democratic vote of its people; Ireland gave up its territorial claim to Northern Ireland; cross border bodies were established between Northern Ireland and Ireland such as cultural, sport and medical cooperation, and co-funded infrastructure projects; the RUC police force was disbanded and replaced by the Police Service of Northern Ireland with quotas for Catholic officers; self-government was returned to Northern Ireland but the executive must be formed by equal numbers of republican and loyalist ministers in proportion to their vote; and all paramilitary groups would decommission their arms. The Agreement was passed by referendum in Northern Ireland by 71%. 3,489 people had been killed in The Troubles between 1969 to 1998; 2,058 by republican paramilitaries, 1,027 by loyalist paramilitaries, and the rest by the British security forces. 52% were civilians. The Northern Ireland Executive has proven highly unstable, collapsing briefly in February 2000, and for a more prolonged period between 2002 and 2007. By 2002, the moderate parties on both sides (the republican SDLP and loyalist UUP) had lost almost all their support to their more extreme rivals (the republican Sinn Fein and loyalist DUP). Nevertheless, the Executive was restored in 2007, through the St Andrews Agreement and the extraordinary cooperation of long-time sworn enemies, Martin McGuiness and Ian Paisley. Meanwhile, various dissident splinter groups of the main paramilitary groups have attempted to mount continued armed campaigns; notably a bomb in Omagh in 1998 that killed 30 people by the republican Real IRA. However, since the mid-2000s paramilitary violence has become relatively rare. Every year on the 12 July, the loyalist Orange Order continues to celebrate the victory of Protestant king William of Orange over Catholic king James II at the Battle of the Boyne (1690). Though tolerably quiet in recent years, Orange Order marches remain a source of sectarian tension; rioting resulting in several deaths occurred during the Drumcree Standoff between 1996 and 2000. After enjoying a prolonged period of stability all the way back to 2007, the Northern Ireland Executive again collapsed in 2016. It has yet to resume. European Union, Maastricht, and the Euro During the 1980s, Greece, Spain and Portugal joined the European Union, bringing the membership to 12, including the extension to include the reunified Germany. The ending of the Cold War also brought about new challenges to Europe, such as increasing migration from the east, and new security threats from the fragmented Eastern Bloc that had previously been dealt with by the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, most member came to see European integration as a means of balancing the influence of the only remaining superpower, the United States. The Maastricht Treaty was a major milestone in the road to economic and political integration, and took effect in November 1993. Maastricht gave the EU broader authority in three main areas. Firstly, it formalised cooperation on law enforcement and justice, as well as foreign policy in relation to security and defence matters. Secondly, it granted citizens of the 12 member states the right to move and live in any EU state. And thirdly, Maastricht laid the foundation for Europe's biggest project for the next decade, monetary union and the Euro, by setting out convergent economic tests for member states to meet, including inflation, public debt, interest rates, and exchange rates. The treaty met with considerable resistance in some countries: Denmark rejected the original treaty in June 1992, before a revised version was approved in May 1993; voters in France approved the treaty in September 1993 only by a tiny margin; and in July 1993 Britain’s John Major was forced to call a vote of confidence in order to secure its passage through parliament, even after negotiating several opt-outs on workers pay and rights, as well as on monetary union. In 1995, Austria, Finland and Sweden joined the European Union and Maastricht, bringing the membership to 15 and leaving Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland as the only major western European countries outside the organization. Maastricht also formalised the European Union political system: the directly elected EU Parliament representing the EU citizens; the EU Council that comprises the heads of government of the member and meets four times a year; the European Commission, essentially the executive branch; the European Court of Justice comprising of one judge from each member, which ensures that EU law is complied with; and the EU Central Bank, responsible for monetary policy. Monetary union meant that members could trade much more easily with one another, and it also bound them together even more closely. The Euro began life at midnight on 1 January 1999, when exchange rates with the participating legacy currencies were irrevocably fixed. For the first two years of its existence, it was only an electronic currency used by banks. Euro notes and coins came into circulation three years later, on 1 January 2002, in Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. It was widely expected that there would be massive problems on its introduction, but in practice the roll-out was extraordinarily smooth. The legacy national currencies were gradually phased out of circulation over the next few months, although they remained exchangeable at national central banks for longer; indefinitely in the case of Austria, Germany, Ireland, and Spain. The only EU states not to adopt the currency were Britain, Denmark and Sweden. Today the Euro is the currency for some 300 million Europeans. In the aftermath, the European Union turned big project; Eastern Enlargement. Yugoslav Wars During the Cold War, Yugoslavia had been something of an anomaly in Eastern Europe. Under the Communist dictatorship of Josip Tito (1943-80), Yugoslavia broke from Moscow during the 1950s, allowing the authoritarian regime to often play the Soviets against the West and gain foreign aid from both. A unique brand of Socialism developed, where large industry was nationalised but small free enterprise were still tolerated, and through hard work it was still possible to attain modest prosperity. While comparatively more liberal than other Communist regimes, Tito wielded tremendous power and rule through an elaborate police state that routinely imprisoned political dissidents. With the death of Tito in 1980, Yugoslavia began to slowly unravel. With the gradual ending of the Cold War, the foreign aid ceased, and the Yugoslavian economy began to stutter, helping to fuel the rise of long suppressed rival nationalisms from the regions complex history. At various times it had been the border between Eastern and Western Christendom, and between Christendom and the Muslim world. For some people Yugoslavia was the long cherished unified homeland of all southern Slavs, yet it contained: the predominantly Catholic Slovenia and Croatia, Orthodox Christian Serbia, Macedonia, and Montenegro; and Muslim Bosnia. Meanwhile Serbia, Croatia, and especially Bosnia all had large minorities. Communist rule officially collapsed in Yugoslavia in 1990, and nationalist movements emerged, with some regions pushing for the break-up of Yugoslavia, or in the case of the Serbia under Slobodan Milošević, forcing it together under their dominance. The break-up of Yugoslavia in an orgy of violence and war crimes began when Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence in June 1991, followed a few months later by Macedonia. The departure of Slovenia and Macedonia proved relatively bloodless, since they contained relatively few minorities. However, the Serb minority in Croatia feared they would be oppressed by the new Croat-dominated government as had happened during World War II. The Serbs in Croatia rose-up in revolt, and began forming paramilitary, with weapons flooding to the rebels from Serbia itself. In September, Milošević ordered Serbian troops into Croatia supposedly as peace-keepers. However, the Serbian forces joined with the rebels to help them seize more territory, including the city of Vukovar where the defenders and many civilians were massacred and at least 20,000 inhabitants expelled. In January 1992, the United Nations brokered a cease fire in Croatia, and sent in international peacekeepers. However in March 1992, conflict engulfed Bosnia when it too declared its independence. The most ethnically mixed of all the former Yugoslav states, the country disintegrated into three warring factions; the Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Serbs, and Bosnian Croats. Weapons flooded into the country from neighbouring Serbia and Croatia, hoping to partition Bosnia between them. The Muslims began to lose ground, with the capital Sarajevo put under siege in April. It would be one of longest sieges in the history of modern warfare; a year longer than the longest of World War II, the Siege of Leningrad. The war for territory in Bosnia was characterised by extreme brutality, with soldiers and civilians targeted alike, indiscriminate shelling of cities and towns, and ethnic cleansing and systematic mass rape. These were perpetrated by all sides, but the Serbs led by Radovan Karadžić were especially notorious. The sheer spectacle of complete disregard for human life shocked Europe, but the United Nations did little other than impose sanctions and an arms embargo. The situation changed when US President Bill Clinton got involved in the conflict. The West managed to pressure Croatia into making peace with Bosnia in early 1994. The Croats would instead redirect their energies to reclaiming lost territory in Croatia, and exiling more than 11,500 Serb rebels and civilians. Yet in Bosnia Karadžić and the Serbs rejected all attempts for negotiation, and continued to expand their territory, capturing Srebrenica in July 1995 where they massacred more than 8,000 Muslims. Nevertheless, from August 1995, the West launched a series of very effective air-strikes against the Bosnian Serb strongholds around Sarajevo, and within months Slobodan Milošević ordered them to enter negotiations. Peace was achieved in Bosnia with the Dayton Peace Agreement on 14 December 1995, whereby it remained an intact multi-ethnic country. Radovan Karadžić himself was accused of war crimes, and forced to become an international fugitive; he was finally arrested in 2008 and sentenced to 40 years' imprisonment. Yet peace in Bosnia did not end the bloodshed in the troubled region. The Kosovo region of southern Serbia was predominantly inhabited by Muslim Albanians. In 1991 they formed the KLA, an initially peaceful protest group that sought independence for Kosovo. Things turned violence from 1996 with a campaign of paramilitary attacks on the Serbian authorities. The West, having lost patience with Milošević, ignored weapons being smuggled into Kosovo to the KLA from Albania, in contravention of the international arms embargo to the former Yugoslavia. The violence peaked in 1998 with KLA terrorist attacks, government crackdowns, and Serbian paramilitary reprisals that left some 2,000 people dead of all ethnicities. The West responded via NATO with a bombing campaign that forced the warring parties to the negotiating table. This was the first time NATO had used military force without the approval of the UN, and has remained controversial ever since. Milošević was forced to accept the Kumanovo Agreement (June 1999), whereby Serbian troops withdrew from Kosovo to be replaced by international peacekeepers. It is estimated that the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia resulted in the death of 140,000 people, and the war crimes in Bosnia were the first to be formally judged as genocide in Europe since World War II. In 2006, Montenegro peacefully separated from Serbia bringing the independent republics of the former Yugoslavia to six. Kosovo also declare her independence in 2008, although Serbia disputed the legality of the declaration. Today Kosovo is an autonomous state but the best that legal scholars can say is that it remains disputed. Meanwhile, Czechoslovakia also split in 1993 into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, although in this case it was an almost entirely peaceful breakup. South Africa of Nelson Mandela The institutionalised racial segregation and discrimination of the Apartheid system in South Africa formally established in 1948, would come to an end through a series of negotiations between 1990 and 1993. Opposition to Apartheid appeared almost immediately, led by many non-racial political parties including the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan-African Congress (PAC). Their campaigns of non-violent resistance dramatically escalated into the conflict in 1960. In a confrontational gesture, in March tens of thousands of non-whites present themselves at police stations all-round South Africa, without their compulsory passes. The authorities were presented with an impossible challenge; to arrest such vast numbers. At Sharpeville near Johannesburg, the police overreact and fired on the crowd, killing 69 and wounding 180, including women and children; most were shot in the back as they fled. The uproar among South Africa's non-white population was immediate, and the following week saw demonstrations, protest marches, strikes, and riots. By the end of the month, the government declared a state of emergency, detaining-without-trial more than 18,000 people, and declaring both the ANC and PAC prohibited organizations. Denied access to protest through democratic means, the anti-Apartheid parties established military wings. Yet none ever posed a serious military threat to the state, and most of the leaders were quickly captured and sentenced to long prison terms, including Nelson Mandela in 1963. With the ANC and PAC leadership in prison or in exile, the late 1960s were a relatively quiet time in South Africa. However, the 1970s brought a new generation of protestors, including Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness movement, which aimed to promote pride in African culture. However, some of their gatherings got out of hand and turned to looting, with police crackdowns turning them into rioting. By the time the police restored order more than a hundred were dead and a thousand injured. From 1973, Steve Biko himself was placed under house-arrest or detained frequently. Following his arrest in August 1977, Biko died under mysterious circumstances in police custody. By the late 1970s, internal disruption and international hostility made it evident to South Africa's leaders and to the business community that Apartheid in its present form could not be sustained. The international response to Apartheid was in fact shamefully feeble; the United States and Britain, obsessed with numerous Cold War conflicts on the continent of Africa, blocked any significant sanctions against South Africa in the United Nations. Yet from 1978, prime minister P. W. Botha attempted a new approach. Many of the defining characteristics of Apartheid were abolished, including restrictions on movement, segregation in public places, the legalising of interracial relationships, and the exclusion of non-whites from skilled trades. Yet exclusion from the political process and white supremacy remained. Botha simultaneously took forceful measures against the ANC in exile, destabilising neighbouring Angola, Mozambique, Botswana, and Namibia, whose governments were hostile to South Africa. Rigid censorship concealed much of this from the outer world, but brave witnesses continued to speak out, among them Desmond Tutu, rector of an Anglican church in Soweto. The first meaningful sanctions were imposed on South Africa by the UN in 1987 with an oil embargo, two years after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union. By the time F.W. de Klerk came to power in 1989, after illness persuaded Botha to step down, the economy was in a shambles, with strikes disrupting the last remaining source of the nation's wealth; the gold and diamond mines. On 2 February 1990, de Klerk astonished South African and the world with a speech announcing the gradual dismantling of Apartheid, the lifting of the ban on the ANC, and the freeing of political prisoners. Nine days later Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years. Until the 1990s a peace process in South Africa without civil war had seemed impossible, but that was the extraordinary achievement of de Klerk and Mandela for which they would collect the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. Mandela was already a figure of real authority within the ANC, and became its official leader in July 1991. Mandela led the ANC in multi-party negotiations with de Klerk’s government to end Apartheid and bring about a peaceful transition to non-racial democracy in South Africa. Astonishingly they were both able to placate the extreme elements among their followers throughout this process. This was greatly helped by Mandela's shining generosity of spirit. In spite of nearly three decades in prison, he seemed to harbour no bitterness and to personify the spirit of reconciliation. He was eager to talk even to those who had been most complicit in all he had fought against. In spite of difficulties, the long awaited first multiracial elections in South Africa’s history took place relatively peacefully in April 1994. Mandela’s ANC won 63% of the vote, de Klerk’s National Party 20%, and the Zulu Inkatha party 10%. As agreed in the interim constitution, all parties shared proportional seats in the cabinet; 20 ANC ministers, 7 from the National Party and 3 from Inkatha. On an extraordinarily emotional occasion, attended by forty-five heads of state and viewed on television round the world, Nelson Mandela was sworn in on 10 May 1994 as the first president of the new democratic South Africa. Among the republic's many problems, two were paramount: defusing the bitter resentments of the past; and dealing with the unrealistic hope of the countries poor for instant remedies. On the first issue, Mandela set-up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1994, under the chairmanship of Bishop Desmond Tutu. The commission was charged with investigating political crimes committed by all parties between 1960 and December 1993, with the power to grant amnesty to the guilty if they cooperate truthfully in the investigation. On the economic front: the government sets ambitious targets in such areas as house-building and made considerable progress; and redistributed some five million acres of land between 1994 and 1997. Yet without the restraining limits of a police state, poverty soon led to an alarming rise in the crime rate. Meanwhile, in a gesture seen as a major step toward reconciliation, Mandela encouraged blacks and whites alike to rally around the predominantly white national rugby team when South Africa hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup. The government power sharing worked surprisingly well, but it had been agreed that the interim constitution would expire in 1999 to be replaced by one based on majority rule. The 81-year-old Mandela retires from politics just before the election of 1999, and was succeeded by Thabo Mbeki as leader. In the elections of that year the ANC won 266 of the 400 seats in parliament or 66%, compared to 10% for their closest rival. The result had ominous implications for the future, with the establishment of a new virtually unchallenged one-party political system in South Africa; the ANC has won a majority over 60% right down to the present day. The country's leaders have often fallen far short of the moral example set by Mandela, with government corruption an endemic problem. Violent crime has not been tamed, and the AIDS rates are among the highest in the world. Squatter communities also just keep expanding, and millions of poor blacks have seen little improvement in their lives. Japan’s Economic Bubble Although Japan had lost in World War II, she certainly won the peace in economic terms. Through close cooperation between a stable government and well-organised industry, and a sincere nationwide determination, by the 1970s Japan was the third largest economy in the world, its “''Economic Miracle''” the subject of admiration and study around the world. Even the Oil Crises of 1973 and 1979 did not cause serious setback. During the 1980s, the Japanese economy continued to grow with the shift to high-technology products such as electronics, and service industries especially finance; from 1983 to 1990 the Tokyo Stock Exchange was the largest in the world. When Hirohito died 1989 after an extraordinarily eventful 63 years as Emperor, to be succeeded by his son Akihito, he must have been pleased at his nation’s economic superpower status. Japan’s “''Bubble Economy''” on the 1980s may have seemed unstoppable, but the laws of economics eventually prevailed. Her continued export surplus led to an overpriced Yen, which combined with the availability of easy credit to see unbridled speculation on the stock and real-estate markets. In late 1989, Japanese officials tried to sharply deflate the overheated economy, which only provoked the bubble to burst. The consequences were severe. The stock and real estate markets plummeted; the Nikkei plunged to 52% of its previous value in 1990, hitting a low of 39% by the end of 1992. Japan entered a decade year long recession. Although relatively low by Western standards, unemployment rose considerably and even managers, who’d believed themselves guaranteed lifetime employment, were dismissed. Socially, many felt disoriented and even betrayed. The situation was not helped by two events in 1995. In January, the Kōbe Earthquake killed more than 5,000 people, and earning the government serious criticism for failing to respond promptly and effectively. A few months later came the notorious Sarin gas subway attack by the AUM religious group, which killed 12 and injured thousands. Many people saw the ability of this bizarre cult to attract otherwise intelligent members as a manifestation of widespread resigned apathy among the public. The collapse of corporatism also saw the more obvious emergence of individuality in Japan, such as the extremes of outlandish clothes and hair-colour among the young. The malaise in the Japanese economy continued well into a second decade, though from 2002 increased demand from China eventually brought Japan steady growth of around the 2% to 3% mark. Afghanistan of the Taliban In February 1989, the Soviet Union fully withdrew from Afghanistan, leaving President Mohammad Najibullah to try and run a Communist Afghan state on his own. Contrary to expectations Najibullah contrived to remain in power for three years, holding at bay the now disunited Mujahideen, who nevertheless resisted all his reconciliation efforts. With the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia decided to end fuel shipments to Afghanistan, and Najibullah's regime began to collapse. In April 1992, Kabul fell to a coalition of Mujahideen militias. Najibullah himself took refuge at the United Nations compound, who proved unable to grant him safe passage out of the city; he would remain there until 1995. The Mujahideen parties set up a fragile Islamic state, but peace and stability proved a distant hope. As rival militias vied for influence, interethnic tensions flared, and over the next three years guerrilla violence and rocket attacks around the capital became endemic. In September 1994, unheralded and without fanfare, the Taliban was founded in Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second city, by mullah Mohammed Omar; Taliban means “students”, in this case Sunni students of the Qur'an. In the violence and chaos of Afghanistan, the Taliban's simple message of Muslim fundamentalism proved immensely attractive both to recruits, and to foreign governments; Pakistan and Saudi Arabia would be early backers. By November 1994, the Taliban had seized control of their home city, Kandahar. Afghanistan’s third-largest city, Herat, fell to them in September 1995, to be followed by Jalalabad at the other extreme of the country a year later. Within weeks of taking Jalalabad, the Taliban achieved the ultimate prize; Kabul. Their first act after conquering the capital, was to seize ex-president Najibullah from the UN compound, and within hours he was swinging from a concrete structure at Kabul's main traffic intersection. Ordinary citizens welcomed the arrival of the Taliban for one of their outstanding qualities, incorruptibility; the old government had been notorious for kidnapping women as sex slaves for their compound. However, the price was high in the ruthless imposition of what they consider a pure Islamic society. Women were not only forced to wear the veil in public, but forbidden from working, attending school, or leaving their homes unless accompanied by a male relative. Meanwhile the strictest version of Sharia (Islamic) law was introduced, and floggings, the amputation of hands for theft, and public executions became commonplace. With the fall of Kabul, the Taliban still only controlled about 65% of the country, and in the north there remained strong opposition from the Northern Alliance. The Taliban areas were largely the home of Pashtun tribes, whereas the Northern Alliance was made up of Uzbeks, Turkmen and others. The civil war continued, with appalling atrocities on both sides. In August 1998, the Taliban captured Mazar-e-Sharif, giving them now about 90% of Afghanistan. By this time, the Taliban was becoming ever more extreme in their imposition of Islamic fundamentalism. The change may be due to increasing contact with al-Qaeda, a multi-national Islamic extremist organisation, who subsequently had a profound effect on the history of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda and the events of 9/11 would spelled the end for the Taliban. Category:Historical Periods